Monday, January 31, 2011

Hey you, the unfair tyrants…
You the lovers of the darkness…
You the enemies of life…
You’ve made fun of innocent people’s wounds; and your palm covered with
their blood
You kept walking while you were deforming the charm of existence and
growing seeds of sadness in their land

Wait, don’t let the spring, the clearness of the sky and the shine of
the morning light fool you…
Because the darkness, the thunder rumble and the blowing of the wind are
coming toward you from the horizon
Beware because there is a fire underneath the ash

Who grows thorns will reap wounds
You’ve taken off heads of people and the flowers of hope; and watered
the cure of the sand with blood and tears until it was drunk
The blood’s river will sweep you away and you will be burned by the
fiery storm.

KUANTAN, Jan 31: PAS’s defeat in the Tenang by-election should not demotivate Pakatan Rakyat because the result was a foregone conclusion, said PAS vice president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man in a statement to Harakahdaily.

Yesterday, PAS candidate Normala Sudirman lost to Barisan Nasional’s Mohd Azahar Ibrahim by a majority of 3,707 votes, more than what the late BN state assemblyman garnered in 2008, amid low voter turnout due to heavy rain and floods.

The majority however fell short of BN's target of reverting to the 5000 votes in pre-2008.

“What we need to focus on now is strengthening the party. PAS and other component parties must have the basic and solid strength at every area.

Failure to develop this basic strength will make it tough for us to face any election. In Tenang, we admit PAS’s shortcomings whether at branch or membership level,” said Tuan Ibrahim.

'Real face of candidate'

Tuan Ibrahim however said winning the by-election held during flash floods will be a grave test, as the new state assemblyman will now have to address the problems left by the flood.

“It is kind of unfortunate for the winner as he will be tested immediately by voters who are now facing floods in Labis and Tenang. If during campaign, the candidate went down from house to house, helped people, the people can now be able to see the ‘real’ side of the BN candidate,” he added.

He also urged Normala not to be disappointed and continue her struggle as the people would ultimately judge her based on her actions, whether she won or lost.

"Next general election is waiting for you" was his message to Normala, who stole the limelight in this election after MCA president launched personal attacks on her for observing Muslim norms.

"Continue to fight in the next battle in Merlimau state seat which will be held soon," she wrote in her blog.

PKR's Teja state assemblyman, Chang Lih Kang, said despite the loss, Normala had captured the heart of many Malaysians in the country.

“In the coming general election, we will conquer Tenang like Ijok,” said Chang, recalling the by-election in Ijok, Selangor, in 2007, in which current Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim lost heavily to BN. He however wrested the state seat from MIC in 2008 and went on to become the MB.

Meanwhile, PAS Youth chief Nasrudin Hasan Tantawi said PAS would continue the struggle in Johor with PR despite the loss.

“Pakatan Rakyat will overcome its weakness, correct its mistakes and improvise our work to rise in the next general election,” he twitted.

Friday, January 28, 2011

It may not be a topic typically talked about at the dinner table or a cocktail party, but most people are actually somewhat obsessed with it. And with good reason: The state of your gastro-intestinal tract (as well as the quality and quantity of its output) is a great barometer of the health of your body. “The GI tract is a processing unit that metabolizes all of the nutrients you take in and eliminates all of the body’s waste,” explains Dr. Amy Foxx-Orenstein, president of the American College of Gastroenterology. “What comes through it is reflective of how well or how ill the body is.”

Hard and dry

The amount of time it takes for the food you eat to make its way through the gastro-intestinal system and exit into the toilet will have an impact on the consistency of your stool. “Intestinal transit averages 40 to 45 hours from when you eat to when it comes out,” says Foxx-Orenstein. If it stays in the GI tract for longer than that, fluid is re-absorbed into the body and the stool becomes harder and dryer. Certain medications—like blood pressure drugs, antidepressants and histamines—can slow down the GI tract. Constipation, which has a myriad of causes, will lead to harder, drier stools (since you’re going less often, your stool will stall in the system and the fluid re-absorbed). For some people, a diet high in dairy can be a cause of constipation, so if you are experiencing problems going (and have dry, hard-to-pass stool when you do finally go), it is worth reducing your dairy intake for a week or two to see if that helps. And being dehydrated can also lead to this problem because if the body is lacking in water, it will draw it—and conserve it—from wherever it can find it.

Little lumps

“An ideal stool looks like a torpedo—it should be large, soft, fluffy and easy to pass,” says Foxx-Orenstein. But when conditions are less than ideal, the stool may become more like little deer pellets. Again, transit time may be part of the issue because slow-moving stool will lose fluid, making them less fluffy and lumpier. A lack of fiber in the diet may also to be to blame. Beware if you’re following a weight-loss plan (such as Atkins) that focuses on increasing protein and decreasing carbohydrates, since that can leave you with a diet that’s low in fiber. And since fiber holds on to fluid, a lack of it will lead to harder, pellet-like poops that may be more difficult to pass.

For some unknown reason, it was only after landing in Jakarata that I felt the “adrenaline rush”, although the main event of my trip was held in Kuala Lumpur, where some 300 people had gathered in the auditorium of the Mahsa University College for the second Abdullah Yusuf Ali Lecture, for which I had chosen the theme, “Between Believers and Disbelievers: Qur’an in the Contemporary World”.

The lecture was jointly organized by the Islamic Book Trust and Yayasn Pendidikan Islam in honor of a man whose translation of the Holy Qur’an has helped millions of human beings since 1938, when it was first published by a publisher in Lahore.

The inaugural lecture of the series was delivered by M. A. Sherif in December 2008. Sherif is the author of Searching for Solace, the only book-length biography of Abdullah Yusuf Ali who was found sitting on the steps of a house in Westminster on a harsh winter day of 1953. On that Wednesday, December 9, the confused old man was taken by the police to Westminster Hospital. The next day, he was discharged from the hospital and taken to a London County Council home for the elderly situated on Dovehouse Street, Chelsea. The next day, he suffered a heart attack, was rushed to St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham where he died three hours later.

I’m going to warn you right now: If you have an aversion to your body’s waste, don’t read any further. However, if you’re like most people, you’re probably very interested in what your stool can tell you about your diet and your health. Who better to answer our questions and tell us a bit about our poo then Anish Sheth, MD, a gastroenterology fellow at the Yale School of Medicine and the co-author of the best-selling book What's Your Poo Telling You? (Chronicle Books, 2007).

Diet Detective: Do we put out exactly what we take in? Are the qualities and types of food the only things that affect what comes out? Or are there multiple forces at work, such as genetics, overall health, etc.?

Dr. Sheth: Sure, there are many factors that determine what our stool looks like. The main modifiable component is our diet, with fiber being responsible for the girth, weight and consistency of our stool. Other factors include transit time (how long it takes the stuff we eat to move through our system), medications (which can cause both constipation and diarrhea and even change the color of our stool – bismuth turns it black), and underlying diseases that may affect our ability to digest food properly (i.e., celiac disease).

Diet Detective: Should people be paying more attention to what comes out of them for health reasons? Or do most of us already pay more attention than we let on?

Dr. Sheth: Yes and yes. On a day-to-day level, taking a quick glance can let us know about our diet (whether we are eating enough fiber, etc.). It can also give clues to the multitude of ailments that affect our GI tract (bleeding could mean inflammatory bowel disease or cancer; fatty stools could indicate liver or pancreatic disease, etc.). I think most people do take a glance but don’t know what to look for and don’t feel comfortable discussing their observations with their doctors.

Brunei has always been known to be one of the earliest Muslim Kingdoms in Southeast Asia. They pride themselves in this fact. All their neighbors pride themselves in this too, and of course, since it is fact, it is irrefutable. Right?

Good. Let’s quickly look at some FACTS then:

It is taught in school textbooks that Pateh Berbai, the brother of Awang Semaun and Awang Alak Betatar, discovered Brunei. Awang Alak Betatar subsequently became Brunei’s first Sultan and was known as Sultan Muhammad Shah. Awang Semaun and Awang Alak Betatar were the famous heroes in Brunei during that time.

Sultan Muhammad Shah was the first Sultan of Brunei. He ruled Brunei from 1363 to 1402. He was the first Muslim ruler of Brunei as a result of his conversion to Islam in 1363 for his marriage to a Johorean-Temasik princess. Prior to conversion to Islam, he was known as Awang Alak Betatar.

He sent a mission to China in 1371 by which his name is recorded in Ming historical record as Mo-ha-mo-sha. Sultan Muhammad Shah died in 1402. Sultan Muhammad Shah was the first Sultan of Brunei. He ruled Brunei from 1363 to 1402. He married the daughter of Iskander, a Johorean-Temasik princess introduced by Bal-Paki, her brother-in-law to be.

So far so good… Oh Really?

Read the above again very carefully !! Sultan Muhammad Shah married a Johorean-Temasik princess in 1363. Now, for all those products of Biro Tata Negara (BTN) out there, what year was Malacca formed? 1403. So, there was a Johor king already in 1363? Are you going to argue with Ketuanan Brunei on this? (By the way, he’s more Melayu than YOU!) Also for those who insist that Penang be handed over to Kedah, read the following again and again …

REMBAU: The British colonial government was more concerned about the plight of poor Malays compared to Umno, said an opposition leader.Rembau PKR chief Badrul Hisham Shaharin made the accusation after coming to learn about the plight of an 80-year-old resident in Kampung Halt Chembong here. The resident, Hasnah Latif is upset with the amount of compensation she has received from the government, claiming that it is well below market value.

Hasnah’s land and house is among the 40 houses in the village which have to make way for the double railway track project from Seremban to Gemas which passes through the district of Rembau and Tampin. Hasnah claimed that the RM98,000 compensation is not sufficient for her to buy a plot of land and build another new house. “From day one, I insisted that I don’t want money and I told the staff at the Rembau parliament service centre to please replace my land and house, but this did not happen,” she said. Click HERE for more

Poop - Poo - Stools - Crap - Feces - Faeces and what they can show us, tell us and teach us.

Contents: What Poop color tells you -- What poops floating or sinking characteristics tell you -- Poop size does matter -- What poop texture tells you -- Conclusion on the importance of knowing your poop and knowing the poop of your children.

Yes, just about everything on poop that you didn't know who to ask about and maybe never would.

Just as we can tell much about a dinosaur from it's petrified poop, we can tell much about a human by the poop they poo out.

In spite of the topics weirdness, it is actually quite a serious topic, which can perhaps even save your life.

Knowing how to read your own poop, or the poop of your children, can help you understand what's going on with the intestines, liver and diet.

It may even alert you to some dangerous illnesses that cause blood to appear in the stool.

Poo - Poop - Crap - Stools - Feces - What their color tells you.

Yes, the color of your poop can tell you something about your general health.

Firstly, if your poop is a milk chocolate color, that's the best.

Black poops are warning bells - could be cancer and bleeding up in your intestines. See a doctor fast.

Yellow bits in your poop suggest you ate corn and that you are not chewing your food enough.

Green poop may mean your liver is overproducing bile, too much bile. Green poop could also mean you ate salads and green vegetables the day or two before.

Green poop may also mean you are not digesting your food very well - if this is the case your green poop will also contain bits of lettuce, silver beet, spinach or other green food stuffs. Apart from mango and watermelon, most fruits will be fully digested in a healthy digestion system - so if they show up in the poop, you may have a digestive problem.

Whitish, foggy areas on your poop may suggest liver problems - the fat in the food not being broken down fully.

Bright red suggests undigested blood in your stool, such as from internal hemorrhoids.

Vegetarians should have floating poop - veges produce gas that get caught in the poop, making the poop lighter than water.

Big meat and junk food eaters will often have floaters too. The poop contains fat, the fat is lighter than water, so the poop floats. This can also mean a liver problem, as the fat is not being broken down fully.

For those of us who eat both veges and meat, expect your poop to sink.

Poo - Poop - Crap - Stools - Feces - Size does matter.

The more you eat, the more you should be pooping.

Ideal poop is 6 to 10 inches in length - 15 to 25cm - pooping two to three out each sitting. Width not so important, as width of poop mostly determined by the width of your colon.

Poo - Poop - Crap - Stools - Feces - What the texture tells you.

Texture of poop is hard to describe. A poop that looks smooth or very rough suggests either poor digestion or poor diet. The ideal poop is in between.

Vegetables make stools soft, but if you have no veges and your stool is soft, then you may have a problem. Without veges the stools should be hard, which is good if you want constipation and resulting hemroids.

Diarrhea

Runny poop is a diarrhea and can be caused by a germ (virus or bacteria) or diet or other condition.

If it's a germ causing the runny poop, then keep the fluids up, like flat lemonade and avoid eating anything except dry toast or dry biscuits, like Jatz, which are most likely safe to eat.

If the runny poop is diet based, it more than likely means you are living on cereal just about. High sugar and lots of fiber. So cut down on the sugary stuff and give your body a chance - all that wiping could cause external hemroids.

If your runny poop is not a germ or diet, then you have a condition that requires medical assessment.

The more Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Cultre Minister, Rais Yatim speaks out to defend BN’s actions or his ministry’s policies, the more we wonder why Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak didn’t offer him early retirement.

Ini? Apo ko bondo??

Patah riuk den khojokan!! Den bolom expired laie...KAH KAH KAH KAH!

Rais’ latest gem is to tell us that ‘The First Lady’ Rosmah Mansor’s middle-eastern and Bangladesh trip, with her entourage of ministers wives and other hangers-on, was well worth every sen of taxpayers’ money and that we, the rakyat, are too dumb to acknowledge her contributions to Malaysia’s international image.

Critics of the overseas visits of the Prime Minister's wife do not understand government regulations, Minister of Information, Communication and Culture Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said Friday.

He said that visits of the kind Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor undertook recently to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bangladesh were provided for by the Members of the Administration Ethics 1988/1999 decided by the cabinet.

Rais cited Article 1180A of the ethics, which said that the wife of a member of the administration may represent her husband or make an overseas visit on official business as long as it does not contradict the function and service of the minister or his ministry. Click HERE for more

Most serious of all is what Sheth and Richman term Rambo Poo. The appearance of blood in the stool is often an indication of gastrointestinal bleeding, Sheth said. Blood can be the result of something relatively minor, like hemorrhoids or diverticulosis. But it could also be the result of colon cancer, and the book advises anyone who sees blood in their stool to visit a doctor.

A daily peek in the toilet bowl is probably not anyone's favourite thing. But one gastroenterologist says that your bowel movements can be an important clue to the state of your digestive health.

Dr Anish Sheth - otherwise known as Dr Stool - and Josh Richman outline all the things you can learn from examining your faeces in What's Your Poo Telling You?, a book that uses jokes and trivia as a way to get people comfortable with talking about gastrointestinal health.

"Of course there's a humorous side to the subject of poo," said Sheth, a gastroenterology fellow at Yale University. "But what isn't as well known is that you can learn about your health by looking in the bowl."

Hamburg striker happy to end five-year rift with the Manchester United manager.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has sought to end his rift with Sir Alex Ferguson by making a personal apology to the Manchester United manager almost five years since their working relationship began to disintegrate and the bitterness eventually led to his departure.

Van Nistelrooy told Ferguson he regretted the way he had behaved – the Dutchman once had a fight with Cristiano Ronaldo on the club's training pitch and drove home after he was left out of the starting line-up against Charlton Athletic on the final day of the 2005-06 season – and admitted he had contributed to the reasons why Ferguson had decided he had to get rid of a striker who had scored 150 goals in his five seasons at Old Trafford. Click HERE for more

As a NYC Cosmetic Dentist, I get asked about saliva quite a bit (often when I have instruments in someone's mouth and they start to drool.)

So let's answer the common questions: What is saliva? Where does it come from? What's in it? What is it used for? What are we still learning about it?

What is saliva, and where does it come from?

Call it what you want -- spit, spittle, drool, etc -- saliva is one of the most common (and obvious) bodily fluids. It's the watery substance that's prevalent in everyone's mouth, and is produced by three pairs of major salivary glands (and many, many minor glands).

These three major glands are located on the inside of each cheek, on the bottom of the mouth, and under the jaw, towards the front of the mouth. The rest of the minor glands are all over the rest of the mouth (the palate, the tongue, your lips, etc.)

These glands work together to produce saliva all day, every day (although production of saliva dramatically falls during sleep. Hey, that's why your mouth is so dry when waking up!) In general terms, most healthy humans will produce somewhere between one and two quarts of saliva a day.

What is in saliva?

This may be a surprise to some people, but Saliva is 98 percent water. Although if you think about it, maybe it's not so surprising -- we learned way back in science class that our bodies are mostly water, so is it a reach that the clear fluid we produce is mostly water? Not really.

But the other 2 percent is the important part. That other 2 percent is a combination of mucus, enzymes (mostly amylase, lysozyme, lingual lipase), electrolytes (sodium, potassium, calcium, etc), and antibacterial compounds. Recent research on mice has centered on the painkiller Opiorphin, which is also present in saliva (Opiorphin is said to be stronger than Morphine). More on this below.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

It is nice to know that Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak is joining the international arena of ‘women’s power’, just like UK’s Tony Blair, Libya’s Gaddafi and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi.

Former British PM, Tony Blair had 101 female Labour Party MPs in his administration after the 1997 general election. They were known as “Blair’s Babes” and were full of hope and high expectations.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, is fond of young and pretty women. He manages to appoint them as ‘ministers’ and one former topless model and beauty queen became equal opportunities minister in his new cabinet. Silvio has at least four women ministers. His opponents have criticised him for selecting young, attractive female candidates—some with little or no political experience—to represent the party in the European Parliament elections.

When it comes to personal protection, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is normally flanked by 30 blue-uniformed females, all supposedly virgins, dangling their guns from their shoulders as they give him 24-hour protection. All wear nail varnish, perfume and lipsticks, and sport trendy hair styles.

I was a vegetarian for a long time – the bulk of my adult life, actually. When I realised how most of the steaks got to my plate (and how pumped-full of antibiotics and growth hormones they were), I put down my fork and took a vow to never be a part of that system again. My research into the brutal American factory farm system and its effects on the environment was a life-changing stumble down into the rabbit hole; I discovered a twisted world of assembly-line death camps, crippled animals, radiated carcasses and festering diseases. I don't have to get into the specifics, but clearly it wasn't a compassionate way to get my suggested 46 grams of protein a day. So I stopped eating meat, cold Tofurkey.

Nearly a decade later I'm no longer a vegetarian. In fact, I couldn't be further from the produce aisle. Nowadays I own and operate a small farm where I raise my own chicken, pork, lamb, rabbit, turkey and eggs. I had a serious change of heart, and it happened when I realised my aversion to meat wasn't solving the animal welfare problem I was protesting about. My beef, after all, wasn't with beef. It was with how the cow got to my plate in the first place. One way to make sure the animals I ate lived a happy, respectable life was to raise them myself. I would learn to butcher a free-range chicken, raise a pig without antibiotics and rear lambs on green hillside pastures. I would come back to meat eating, and I would do it because of my love for animals.

Do you put dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent made of silicone, in your chicken dishes? How about tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a chemical preservative so deadly just five grams can kill you?

These are just two of the ingredients in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget. Only 50 percent of a McNugget is actually chicken. The other half includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.

There's no doubt processed food like that from McDonald's is not part of a healthful diet, and I'm grateful I've never had a chicken McNugget. But many Americans cannot say the same.

This sentiment was echoed by Federal Judge Robert Sweet in a lawsuit against the restaurant chain in 2003: "Chicken McNuggets, rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, are a McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook."

Seven years later, I still wonder whether McDonald's customers truly understand the risks of consuming fast food on a regular basis.

If you missed Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Super-Size Me," I highly recommend you watch this real-life illustration of just how dangerous an excessive fast food diet can be. And excessive is likely far less than you imagine: Eating fast food just twice a week doubles your risk of developing insulin resistance, compared to eating it only once a week. (Insulin resistance one of the primary driving factors behind most Western diseases, from diabetes to cancer to heart disease.)

The truth is, McDonald's fare contains non-food ingredients that can seriously harm your health. This shouldn't come as any great surprise. After all, how healthful can something be that shows no signs of decomposing after being left on a counter for more than a decade?

A row has flared up in Tenang even before the BN unveils its candidate for the by-election due to be balloted by the end of this month. Johor Education Department director Markom Giran, who was caught on video allegedly campaigning for the ruling coalition, defended his actions by saying that it was his duty to "send for courses" those found to be "against government policy".

"I did not campaign. I was speaking to my subordinates. It is our right to identify which (political parties) our teachers are supporting," Malaysiakini reported Markom as saying on Monday.

"If they are found to be against the government, we will call them up and send them for courses to let them understand that a government servant should not be against government policy."